Live Free Learn Free Blog » Unschooling and the Cure for Cancer <title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-content/themes/thirteen/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="text/xml" title="RSS .92" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/rss/" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/atom/" /> <link rel="pingback" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/xmlrpc.php" /> <style type="text/css"> </style> <link rel='archives' title='August 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/03/' /> <link rel='archives' title='January 2007' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2007/01/' /> <link rel='archives' title='December 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/12/' /> <link rel='archives' title='November 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/11/' /> <link rel='archives' title='October 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/10/' /> <link rel='archives' title='September 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/09/' /> <link rel='archives' title='August 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='May 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/05/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/03/' /> <link rel='archives' title='February 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/02/' /> <link rel='archives' title='January 2006' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/01/' /> <link rel='archives' title='December 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/12/' /> <link rel='archives' title='November 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/11/' /> <link rel='archives' title='October 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/10/' /> <link rel='archives' title='September 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/09/' /> <link rel='archives' title='August 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/08/' /> <link rel='archives' title='July 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/07/' /> <link rel='archives' title='June 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/06/' /> <link rel='archives' title='May 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/05/' /> <link rel='archives' title='April 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/04/' /> <link rel='archives' title='March 2005' href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2005/03/' /> <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/xmlrpc.php?rsd" /> </head> <body> <div id="headwrapper"> <div id="header"> <h1 id="title"><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog">Live Free Learn Free Blog</a></h1> </div> </div> <div id="wrapper"> <div id="content"> <div class="post" id="post-166"> <h2 class="posttitle"><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/07/30/unschooling-and-the-cure-for-cancer/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to Unschooling and the Cure for Cancer">Unschooling and the Cure for Cancer</a></h2> <p class="postdate"> July 30th, 2006 at 11:11 am (<a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/category/unschooling-life/" title="View all posts in Unschooling Life" rel="category tag">Unschooling Life</a>) </p> <div class="postentry"> <p>Sometimes it seems that everywhere you look, there are unschoolers reading Shakespeare, learning algebra in two weeks, immersing themselves in ancient Roman history or the plays of Chekhov, starting businesses at age 9, helping their families design and build new homes, discovering the cure for cancer….</p> <p>Well, maybe not that last one, but still….</p> <p>It’s only every once in a while that our days are at all comparable to these (for the most part) rather academic fairy tales. Often, Kenzie is content to play outside, build with Bionicle, stage elaborate scenes with his action figures, read lots of comics or <a target="_blank" href="http://www.horrible-histories.co.uk/"><em>Horrible Histories</em></a>, draw, and play with the animals. All fine and dandy with me. I love<em> Horrible Histories</em>, and I can build a mean Bionicle creature. But then, there are days like yesterday.</p> <p>Kenzie’s been writing a novel, and yesterday, he spent hours at it. While sitting on the bed and listening to the second book of Jonathan Stroud’s <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bartimaeustrilogy.com/"><em>Bartimaeus Trilogy</em></a>, he spun ten chapters’ worth of fanciful tales on the old laptop.</p> <p>After several hours, he decided to watch the dvd stage production of Macbeth that he checked out of the library. Recently, he’s been intrigued by both Macbeth and Hamlet. He sat down with his Usborne<em> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0746045654/sr=1-5/qid=1154273608/ref=sr_1_5/103-2529277-8555046?ie=UTF8&s=books">World of Shakespeare</a> </em>and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887532799/ref=cm_lm_fullview_prod_3/103-2529277-8555046?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155"><em>Macbeth for Kids</em></a> books, and we watched most of the play. We talked about <a target="_blank" href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A78882">the curse</a>, about comic characters (the porter) inserted into tragedies, about sets and stage dressings, about soliloquies, about envy and power and guilt, about language, etc., etc.</p> <p>Later, just before we turned in for the night, we found ourselves creating fantastic stories about thousand-pound penguins, a creature named chickzilla, and huge monsters made of corn on the cob. We must have spent a good hour laughing and trying to one-up each other.</p> <p>This morning, he’s decided that, after neglecting his Gameboy for most of the week, it deserves his attention. I can hear Sonic’s hyper music in the background. He hasn’t forgotten about his novel, though. He wants me to look up <a target="_blank" href="http://www.lulu.com/">LuLu.com’s</a> printing specifications when I finish this entry…. And Macbeth? I’m sure we’ll encounter those three bearded witches again soon enough. </p> </div> </div>  <h3 id="comments">2 Comments</h3> <ol id="commentlist"> <li id="comment-122"> <h4 class="commentauthor"><a href='http://biggestethiopianflag.blogspot.com' rel='external nofollow'>dharmamama</a> said,</h4> <p class="commentdate"> July 30, 2006 at <a href="#comment-122" title="Permanent link to this comment">8:07 pm</a> </p> <p>“We talked about the curse, about comic characters (the porter) inserted into tragedies, about sets and stage dressings, about soliloquies, about envy and power and guilt, about language, etc., etc.”</p> <p>See, that’s what scares me about unschooling. There are a million topics like this one that I could never have an intelligent discussion about. </p> </li> <li id="comment-125"> <h4 class="commentauthor"><a href='http://www.livefreelearnfree.com' rel='external nofollow'>Shana</a> said,</h4> <p class="commentdate"> July 31, 2006 at <a href="#comment-125" title="Permanent link to this comment">3:33 pm</a> </p> <p>I think this comment deserves a longer, more thorough answer than would easily fit here, so I’ve answered it in another post: <a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/2006/07/31/what-i-didnt-mention/" rel="nofollow">What I Didn’t Mention</a>. Thanks, dharmamama, for reminding me that I need to make sure I show the whole picture! </p> </li> </ol> <h3 id="postcomment">Post a Comment</h3> <form action="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform"> <p> <input type="text" name="author" id="author" value="" size="28" tabindex="1" /> <label for="author">Name (required)</label> </p> <p> <input type="text" name="email" id="email" value="" size="28" tabindex="2" /> <label for="email">E-mail (required)</label> </p> <p> <input type="text" name="url" id="url" value="" size="28" tabindex="3" /> <label for="url"><abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr></label> </p> <p> <textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="60" rows="8" tabindex="4"></textarea> </p> <p> <input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" class="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit Comment" /> <input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="166" /> </p> </form> </div> <div id="sidebar"> <ul> <li id="meta"> <h2>Meta</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/wp-login.php">Login</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/feed/" title="Syndicate this site using RSS">Entries <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.livefreelearnfree.com/blog/comments/feed/" title="The latest comments to all posts in RSS">Comments <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr></a></li> </ul> </li> <li id="search"> <form method="get" id="searchform" action="/blog/index.php"> <p> <input type="text" value="" name="s" id="s" /> <input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" class="submit" value="Search" /> </p> </form> </li> </ul> </div> <div id="footer"> <p> <a href="http://wordpress.org" title="Powered by Wordpress, state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform.">Powered by Wordpress</a> · Design by <a href="http://beccary.com" title="Theme designed by Beccary">Beccary</a> and <a href="http://weblogs.us" title="Theme sponsored by Weblogs.us">Weblogs.us</a> · <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer" title="This page validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional"><abbr title="eXtensible HyperText Markup Language">XHTML</abbr></a> · <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer" title="This page validates as CSS"><abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr></a> </p> </div> </div>  <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var sc_project=605365; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_partition=4; var sc_security="d224bf47"; </script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><a href="http://www.statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://c5.statcounter.com/counter.php?sc_project=605365&java=0&security=d224bf47&invisible=1" alt="free stats" border="0"></a> </noscript>  </body> </html>